The threshing mechanism of a harvesting machine includes a rotating cylinder mounted therein which cooperates with a concave unit to thresh the grain as the grain is fed into the threshing mechanism from a headerassembly on the harvesting machine. The threshing cylinder rotates and engages the incoming cut grain such that the majority of the grain is removed and dropped through an open grate in the concave unit where the grain is collected and transported by some type of auger flighting to a storage area.
In the past, cylinder reel teeth have been manufactured generally by hot forging a steel plate and cold trimming the plate to the desired shape to provide a cylinder reel tooth. The resultant hot forging and subsequent cold trimming of the steel plate produces ragged edges on the parting line of the trimmed steel plate or blade which damages the grain during the threshing mechanism and provides a cylinder reel tooth having undesirable tensile and yield strength. Because such prior art cylinder reel teeth or blades include only one blade surface to contact the grain passing through the threshing mechanism, the ragged edges on the parting line of the blade results in rapid wear of the blade surface of the cylinder reel tooth. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,664,100 and 3,410,271 for examples of the structure of the single edged reel teeth or blades. This rapid wear of cylinder reel tooth results in increased maintenance cost in maintaining the threshing mechanism in efficient operating condition and requires considerable down time of the threshing mechanism as individual reel teeth are replaced. The resultant expensive replacement of reel teeth and a considerable amount of down time of the threshing mechanism may result in the loss of a particular crop to be harvested and has resulted in inefficiency of the particular threshing machines in harvesting the grain.